By Samir Mathur
ATTACK THE BLOCK (Rated R) opens today, only at the Regal Waterford Lakes. Click here for showtimes.
As summer winds down, your options at the cinema tend to dwindle accordingly. Today’s new releases include a remake of a semi-obscure horror film from 1985; a remake of a campy action film from 1982; something where Anne Hathaway is playing British; and at one location in town only, Joe Cornish’s excellent debut feature, Attack the Block. This should be an easy choice to make.
Set around a council estate in South London, it's the story of a gang of ethnically-diverse teenagers, who mug a young nurse before finding a mysterious creature that has crash-landed into a car. Being youngsters, they promptly kick the crap out of it. Trouble is, there are more where that one came from. A lot more, with sharp, neon-green teeth. And they're all coming to the block. The lads, whose authentic slang may take a few minutes to get used to, have to defend their turf, with the help of the same nurse, a posh stoner, a couple of wannabe-thug infants, and a low-level drug dealer, played by Nick Frost (Hot Fuzz, Paul).
The film moves at a good pace, though its attempts to provide some back story to the kids, in order to explain their socio-economic status, felt rather forced and preachy. Especially after seeing the kids rob the nurse at the beginning, at knife-point no less, it's harder to root for them and hope to see them succeed, though it's a great curveball to see them having to then work alongside their victim. And the film is ambitious enough to pack all its events into just a few hours, all in the same evening.
What's most impressive about it is that it makes its low budget go an impressively long way, making it a kindred spirit with fellow cheap-but-effective alien flicks ‘Monsters’ (watch that on Netflix Instant if you haven’t seen it) or even ‘District 9’. Like Edgar Wright (who exec-produced this), Cornish has a flair for impressive action sequences and understated humour. Armed with a killer score from Basement Jaxx, and a healthy admiration for the early works of John Carpenter, Attack the Block isn't without its flaws, but it's still well worth the effort to seek out. I'd be surprised if it stayed here for longer than a week, so go quickly.
